AORA - Cognitive Performance Monitor

Monitor your cognitive performance through keyboard latency, tab switching, and focus patterns

AORA is a Chrome extension that monitors your cognitive performance in real time by analyzing keyboard dynamics, mouse behavior, tab switching patterns, and focus duration. It computes a Brain Health Score (0–100) designed to help you understand your mental fatigue, focus quality, and cognitive load while working in the browser. All analysis happens entirely on your device. AORA never reads what you type, never reads page content or URLs, and never transmits any data externally. How it works: AORA captures timing patterns from your keyboard and mouse activity on every page you visit. These signals are processed locally to derive cognitive metrics grounded in published research on attention, task-switching costs, and monitor performance: • Keystroke dynamics: Measures keystrokes per minute, key dwell times (how long each key is held), flight times (gaps between keystrokes), and error correction rate (backspace/delete frequency). Flight time variability and dwell time variability are established indicators of mental fatigue in the cognitive science literature. • Mouse behavior: Samples cursor position periodically to calculate movement velocity and "mouse jitter," the variance in velocity, which serves as a proxy for stress and motor control fluctuation. • Tab switching patterns: Tracks how often you switch tabs, how long you dwell on each tab before switching, and "thrashing events," rapid switches where you spend fewer than 15 seconds on a tab. Research shows each context switch can cost up to 23 minutes of recovery time and 20% of cognitive capacity. • Focus periods: Records sustained focus intervals and labels them by quality (deep focus, sustained focus, moderate focus, or light focus) and time of day (morning, afternoon, or evening). These raw signals are combined into three sub-scores: 1. Focus Quality (40% of Brain Health Score): Derived from the proportion of deep/sustained focus periods, average focus duration, consistency of focus across the session, and time-of-day weighting (morning focus is weighted slightly higher based on circadian rhythm research). 2. Task Efficiency (30%): Based on your switch recovery ratio (how well you recover from context switches), thrashing avoidance, average tab dwell time, and the proportion of productive switches. 3. Cognitive Balance (30%): Computed from cognitive load percentage, fatigue indicators (flight time variability, error rate, mouse jitter, dwell time variability), the balance between load and fatigue, and session duration stability. The final Brain Health Score is a weighted average of these three components. All calculations are fully deterministic. Privacy: AORA is built with privacy as a core principle: • All data stays on your device in chrome.storage.local. Nothing is ever sent to any server. • No page content, URLs, form data, or personal information is read or stored. • Only timing patterns from keyboard and mouse events are analyzed — never the content of what you type. • No analytics, telemetry, or third-party services are included. • No network requests of any kind are made by the extension. AORA stores the following data locally: • Session metrics: Keystroke timing statistics, mouse jitter values, tab switch counts, focus period records, and tab dwell times for the current day. • Historical data: At midnight, the current day's summary is archived by date. History is retained locally for your reference. • Task data: Task names, session durations, and timestamps for the task timer feature. • Preferences: Neurodivergent mode setting and overlay position. Research basis: The cognitive metrics and thresholds used by AORA are informed by published research on: • Context switching costs • Cognitive capacity loss from interruptions • Average interruption intervals in workplace settings • Keystroke dynamics as indicators of cognitive state (flight time variability, dwell time patterns) • Mouse kinematics as stress indicators (velocity variance / jitter) • Circadian rhythm effects on focus quality Who this is for: • Knowledge workers who want to understand their focus patterns throughout the day • Developers, writers, researchers, and students who spend long sessions in the browser • Anyone curious about their cognitive load and fatigue patterns • Users who benefit from reduced visual stimulation (Neurodivergent Mode) • People who want gentle, data-driven nudges about when to take a break AORA does not diagnose any condition or replace professional advice. It is a self-awareness tool that helps you notice patterns in how you work.